


Party Games

by whereismygarden



Series: play on, give me excess [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, Golden Lace (sort of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2013-04-05
Packaged: 2017-12-07 14:36:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/749622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereismygarden/pseuds/whereismygarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bonfire on an early autumn night, alcohol, and some games about truth. Lacey!Belle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Party Games

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU cursed Storybrooke. This is underage Lacey!Belle, but Gold isn't even in this story, so I don't think it needs the underage warning.

Four six-packs of cheap beer, a fire, a few bags of chips, the woods, cigarettes. Their needs really were simple. Lacey wasn’t drunk yet: it was only her third beer, and it was tempered by all the chips. The only one who was more than tipsy was Ashley, who was also on her third: unfortunately, she had been cursed with the tolerance of a small child. Her insistence on healthy food didn’t help matters, either. Sean was simply grinning, his arm around her shoulders, carefully blowing all his smoke away from his girlfriend. It was sweet, in a sort of weird way, Lacey thought. Greg was next to her, and he kept trying to put his arm around her the same way: no matter that she did not have relationships. Not the kind with hand-holding, anyway _. A meeting of minds and/or genitalia_ , she had joked to Ruby. The heart was not the kind of thing you let another person touch.

                “Greg, stop,” she half-whined, shrugging him off. “It’s hot.” It was only mid-September, and the woods were only cool: the fire was more than enough. He scowled at her and pulled another beer from its plastic rings.

                “Whatever, Lacey,” he tried to catch Ruby’s eye, but the girl in question was lying on her back, squinting at the fire and smoking two different cigarettes. “Ruby, what the hell are you doing?”

                “This one is lime flavored,” she held one up. “This one is vanilla. I don’t know if I like them together.” Lacey giggled.

                “It’s not like cigarettes are one of those things that people go to ‘tastings’ for.” Her friend simply sat up, a few stray bits of plant matter clinging to her back, and inhaled deeply.

                “Fires make everything taste good,” she decided. Lacey dragged on her own cigarette: nothing flavored for her. “We should play a game.”

                “We only have five people, since Billy wouldn’t come.” Ashley pointed out. Lacey popped a chip into her mouth.

                “I bet I cream you and Ruby both at gay chicken,” she said. “Greg and Sean wouldn’t give us any kind of good show though.” Ashley shrieked, and Greg shifted next to her, not even laughing at the comment. “Boring fuckers,” she said, blowing out irritably. The woods were lovely, the fire was nice, the beer and smoking were even better, but she liked to see the stars in the woods. The fire ruined her night vision, and it made her uneasy.

                “It’s okay, I have a better game,” Ruby announced, always the conciliator. They were all only really friends under her influence, and all turned, looking at their disheveled leader, who stood like a queen, leaves in her dyed hair, two twin fires in her hand. “Marry, Fuck, Kill. It’s the oldest game.” Ashley snorted.

                “The most boring game, you mean.” Ruby held up a finger.

                “We have to use people from town, though. And there’s no lying in Marry, Fuck, Kill.” Sean sighed quietly, not liking this game, but he didn’t say anything. Lacey wasn’t sure if he was taciturn or just stupid, sometimes. She couldn’t decide if Ashley was better off with someone as dumb as she or someone much smarter.

                “Okay, then.” Ashley sniffed. “Ruby: marry, fuck, kill: the sheriff, David from the animal shelter, and…Leroy.” Lacey ate another handful of chips and knocked away Greg’s hand again while Ruby pretended to deliberate.

                “Fuck the sheriff, marry David, kill Leroy,” she replied brightly.

                “It’s supposed to be hard to choose, and weird!” Lacey protested. “That was basically a foregone conclusion.” Ashley narrowed her eyes, barely visible across the fire.

                “Do you want a hard one? I can think of one.” She crumpled up her empty can and tossed it to the side.

                “Bring it.” Lacey laughed. Ruby frowned through her mild intoxication and the haze of smoke around her.

                “Play nice,” she said. “Come on, guys.” Sean touched Ashley’s arm and she turned to smile at him. Lacey thought that if anyone ever reduced her to that kind of compliant happiness, she might throw up.

                “All right, then: Glass, Gold, and Hopper.” Lacey flicked a bit of ash to the ground and sipped the last of the beer.

                “Fuck Glass, marry Gold, kill Hopper,” she said easily. She heard Greg and Ashley inhale half their drinks, and Sean literally had his mouth hanging open. Ruby seemed torn between disgust and laughter, and she opted to simply suck heavily on her doubled cigarettes.

                “Are you fucking insane?” Greg asked, and Ashley echoed the question, with a higher pitch.

                “Yeah, you may have mixed up Gold and Hopper,” Ruby said. “In fact, I’d go with definitely.” Lacey shifted and shrugged.

                “Hopper is just _not_ my type. He’s all waffling and awkward.” Ruby shook her head.

                “I mean logically, why would you marry Gold?” Sean said. Lacey sniffed.

                “Fuck’s sake, obviously I wouldn’t really marry him, nor would I bang Glass, nor kill Hopper. It’s a game!” She crushed her can under a sandaled foot. If the night was going to turn into cross-examine Lacey time, she needed to be much drunker. Ruby raised her eyebrows: she couldn’t slide past her best friend’s inquiry with an offhand comment about it being a game.

                “You owe us an explanation,” she decreed, tossing the lime cigarette to the ground and stomping it out. Ashley was giving her a strangely interested look, and Greg was torn between curiosity and revulsion. Both of them were trying to hide it: Sean simply kept drinking and smoking, looking mildly engaged in the issue.

                “It’s simple.” Lacey said, sighing. “Gold is rich and hot, Glass is tolerable—I mean, I could do him once—but you couldn’t get me to touch Hopper.”

                “Hopper is nice, and Gold is a scary motherfucker,” Ruby said, which seemed to be the extent of her problem with Lacey’s choice. “And he is not hot, okay? Not even a little. And you know he’d be into some kinky shit, right?”

                “Not like Lacey couldn’t get behind that,” Greg teased, poking her leg. Lacey swatted his hand away.

                “What do you know about it, vanilla boy?” she said, rather cruelly. She was tired of everyone asking about her sexual preferences. Ruby cackled, and even Sean cracked a smile. Greg glared at her and shoved away, grabbing another beer. “I’m tired of this game,” she announced. “I’m going for a walk.” Greg was too miffed to do anything, Ashley was surely happy, and Sean never said anything. Ruby rolled her eyes, but for once her friend’s reprimand didn’t have an effect. She pulled another cigarette from the pack in her purse and lit it from the butt of hers: a bad habit to get into, when they were so expensive, but she didn’t care for now.

                She wandered blindly, back to the fire, as her night vision returned. The little glowing end of her cigarette didn’t bother her eyes much, and she felt better away from the stifling heat of the fire. Being able to see the trees and stars made her feel less like she was suffocating. She loved Ruby, more than anything, but she felt little and small after her grilling. Greg, acting like he knew things about her because they did it a few times in his truck! Ruby wore sex on her sleeve and flaunted herself; no one really cared. Boys still wanted to date her, even girls like Ashley still liked her. Lacey didn’t wear anything on her sleeve: she was just herself. She had sex sometimes—less than Ruby—and read books and skipped school and was nice to kids. People didn’t like that they couldn’t put her into one box.

                “I’m on the pursuit of happiness,” she sang to herself, quietly. “I’ll be fine once I get it, I’ll be good, yeah.” She didn’t really believe in happiness, only brief joy and as much sensation as you could grab at once. “Oh God, why did I drink so much and smoke so much?” She had an okay voice, not really suited for this song. “Ah, fuck it…” she trailed off, flicking ash to the ground. “People tell me slow my roll, I’m screaming out _FUCK THAT!_ ” she shrieked the last words back towards her friends.

                “You can’t sing!” Greg shouted.

                “I’mma do just what I want, looking ahead, no turning back.” It was really a sad song, but the night was suddenly a sad night, light and friends at her back, the stars bright, cold, and pretty over her. The smoke was sweet, banishing the sour taste of bad beer, and she made herself not think about everyone considering her a maniac. Gold was a maniac, too, and maybe that was a good sign. She needed someone who could match her, deviance for deviance, ice for ice, hunger for hunger.

                She grinned into the night. Seduction was a game she could play, and see if he played back. Her anger at her friends dissolved. They could think she was strange; she _was_ strange. It wasn’t like Ruby was going to actually go out and try to get in bed with Sheriff Graham, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics are from Kid Cudi's "Pursuit of Happiness." (I was really pleased with how well the song goes with the tone of the story, let me know if it feels awkward to you)


End file.
